Glasgow Warriors’ naivety cost them the first leg of the 1872 Cup and they will start a tough review this morning to aim to put it to rights.
Scotland hooker Fraser Brown, one of the better performers for the Warriors as they lost 18-17 to a last-gasp try despite having a man advantage for 75 minutes, thinks his team gets sucked into playing Edinburgh’s preferred game too often in the inter-city clashes these days.
“The bottom line is Edinburgh played well and we did not,” he said. “We didn’t stick to our shape, we didn’t stick to our structure.
“It feels like we say this every time we come to Murrayfield to play Edinburgh, we just play poorly and don’t hang on to the ball.”
The problem has come with too many turnovers running the multi-phase game that became Glasgow’s trademark last season, he continued.
“I think we turn over the ball more than any other team in the league at the moment,” added Brown. “That is the nature of the kind of rugby we aim to play, but we have to realise when we have to hold onto the ball and make teams have to work harder in defence.
“They were down to 14 men, had a tighthead prop who was going to have to play 76 minutes and has not played a lot of rugby at this level.
“We spoke all week about keeping the ball, going through the phases, cutting down the mistakes.
There was a bit of naivety from us, we need to learn and need to learn quickly.”
Brown noted that Glasgow’s setpiece had gone well, with dominance in the scrums and a better performance in the lineouts.
“The scrum went well and we missed a lift on one lineout, but that was the oinly one we lost,” he said. “The set piece functioned well but it is about what we did with the ball afterwards, we turned it over too many times; knock-ons, missed passes, poor ruck retention.
“We had a good training week, had one of our sharpest team runs in the one before the game.
“It is just about performing when we get here. Too many times we play Edinburgh and get sucked into their kind of game, and we just don’t play play our game.
“Rarely did we get to five-plus phases and get into our shape. When we did the ball was slow, they did a good job of slowing out ball down but we are a good enough team to generate quick ball and did not do that.”
Unlike Edinburgh, Dave Rennie gave his squad Boxing Day off as well as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, saying that they wouldn’t panic from just one poor performance and result. But Brown expects the review to involve some hard talking, although no real chance in direction tactically.
“I don’t think we do too much different in terms of preparation,” he said. “We prepared really well, we knew what we wanted to do, but we just did not execute, did not play our game. We just have to manage the ball, control the ball, cut out those mistakes and get to playing multi-phase.
“If we do that we will open teams up, we have a brilliant backline, obviously, but also some really powerful runners in the forwards with good skills. We need to get to multi-phase to exploit spaces, get some offloads in and get some shoulders to run at.”
Brown said he felt sorry for Scotland team-mate Simon Berghan, red carded for a stamp to the hooker’s head in the first five minutes.
“It was just one of those things, I think it was an accident,” he said. “I spoke to Bergs afterwards, it was not malicious. It looks so innocuous, it is those ones that can catch you out.
“I think he has seen my back and has gone to put his foot on my back in good-natured fun and caught my head.
“There was nothing in it, you just have to be so careful with boots in rucks. These days safety is so paramount in the game, it is headline stuff.”